1. Field of the Invention
The present invention is related to a connector assembly functioning as power parts of a corresponding backplane connector assembly, especially to a connector assembly having a special power contact arrangement to get balanced and steady current transmission beside the backplane connector assembly which is used to connect with a daughtercard and a backplane or motherboard.
2. Description of the Related Art
Many present day telecommunications systems, computer systems, etc. include a number of printed circuit boards or cards which plug into a backplane or motherboard of the systems to enhance or complete performances of the systems. The backplane or motherboard generally provides a pathway by which the printed circuit boards or cards communicate with each other. In addition, the backplane provides power as well as a reference voltage or ground to each of the printed circuit boards. Conventionally, the parts for power or ground are arranged right beside or around the signal contacts of a backplane connector as attachments of this connector, as shown in Johnson et al. U.S. Pat. No. 4,655,518, Madore et al. U.S. Pat. No. 4,973,260, Buchter U.S. Pat. No. 5,582,519 and Lemke et al. U.S. Pat. No. 6,325,644. Usually different locations or structures for the power or ground parts inside the backplane connector are considered to function in their own ways for specialized performances like EMI shielding, crosstalk suppressing, power supply, etc. For the power application, high current setting is unpractical and undesired for these conventional connectors due to possible noise induced in the neighboring signal contacts by high current through the power parts. And trend of high density contact arrangement and minimization of electronic parts results in much difficulty of manufacturing connectors due to less available space for the installation of power or ground parts without affecting the normal function of signal contacts.
Therefore, independent, modularized power parts are considered to adopt to solve the minimization and noise problem in the arts. As introduced in Weber et al. U.S. Pat. No. 4,790,763, Weber U.S. Pat. No. 4,818,237, Fedder et al. U.S. Pat. No. 5,158,471 and Provencher U.S. Pat. No. 5,360,349, modularized power parts being able to programmably latch on signal contact parts are disposed next to the signal contact parts to form corporately with the signal contact parts a complete backplane connector. Alternately, Demler et al. U.S. Pat. No. 4,881,905, Barkus et al. U.S. Pat. No. 5,139,426 and Clark et al. U.S. Pat. No. 6,319,075 all show an independent power connector mounted at different location from the one of the signal connector on the backplane or daughtercard. Obviously, additional space on the backplane and daughtercard must be reserved for extra power parts and independent power connectors. More manufacturing processes are needed to make the parts or connectors, and sometimes the extra processes cost high.
Besides, as shown in the ""075 patent of Clark et al., all of the contacts of the power connector are arranged in a row along the lengthwise direction of the connector housing so that the contacts are positioned vertically, and the direction is usually parallel to the surface of a printed circuit board when the power connector is seated on the printed circuit board. For a power connector with a large number of contacts, the size of the power connector is enlarged to accept all of the parallel-arranged contacts. Obviously the enlarged power connector is sometimes occupied more room than being expected, and the manufacturing process of the connector becomes complex too. Therefore, another thought for designing the connector is trying to place the contacts as a horizontal row along the direction perpendicular to the printed circuit board so that the contacts look like stacking vertically with each other. The different thought is helpful for the connector design due to the feature of space-saving and size-minimizing. However, the stacked arrangement of contacts varies the shape of contacts due to their installed positions. Obviously the top contact stacked highest is longer than the bottom contact because the distance between the installed position of the top contact and the printed circuit board where the connector is seated is farthest. The result of difference lengths of contacts causes different bulk resistance for each contact, which lowers the current rating through contacts with high resistance and induces the difficulty of circuitry designing.
Therefore, an object of the present invention is to provide a power connector assembly having plug and receptacle parts with uniform electrical properties like resistance in order to achieve stable electrical performance for safety of the circuitry of printed circuit boards where component connectors of the connector assembly are mounted.
Another object of the present invention is to provide a power connector assembly having a compact part arrangement to assemble its parts in order to minimize its component connectors and the final backplane connector assembly with signal connector parts.
Another object of the present invention is to provide a power connector assembly having an idealized distribution of power current density per unit area on the mating faces of mated connectors of the connector assembly to get the maximum current carrying capacity and facilitate assembling of the power connector assembly with other signal ones.
To obtain the above objects, a connector assembly in accordance with the present invention includes a plug connector and a receptacle connector mated with the plug connector. The plug connector has a housing with a plurality of passageways to receive the same number of plug conductors. Each plug conductor has a contacting portion extending out of the housing, a retention portion staying in the housing to fix the conductor therein, and a tail portion extending out of another side of the housing to further connect to a printed circuit board. Meanwhile, the receptacle connector has a complementary housing with a plurality of passageways to receive the same number of receptacle conductors configured to mate with the plug conductors. Each receptacle conductor has a contacting portion installed in its corresponding passageway, a retention portion next to the contacting portion to fix the conductor in the passageway, and a tail portion extending out of the housing to further connect to another printed circuit board.
Specially, most of conductors of the plug and receptacle connector are arranged in a row along a first direction parallel to printed circuit boards where the connectors are seated respectively. And at least one conductor of the plug or receptacle connector is located beside others and arranged along a second direction perpendicular to the first direction. Controllable electrical property and maximum current carrying capacity of the conductors in the connector assembly is easily acquired due to the specially arranged conductors. And the size of the connector assembly can be compact to meet the need of structural simplification and become easier to be assembled with other backplane connector parts.
Other objects, advantages and novel features of the invention will become more apparent from the following detailed description of the present embodiment when taken in conjunction with the accompanying drawings.